Update: YouTube was down for some people around the world, but Google has since corrected the problems. A YouTube spokesperson responded to our inquiry with this statement: “Some people encountered errors on YouTube’s homepage in the U.S. today. We worked quickly to address the issue and fixed the problem. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this caused.”
You notice that no reason was provided for the outage, however.
Previously:
It looks like YouTube is down in some parts of the world, as Twitter is filled with complaints about it. It’s rather ironic that when there are problems with other social networks, Twitter, which disappoints in user growth constantly and did again last night, is where people go to complain about the more popular networks going down.
Some YouTube users getting 500 error
Not everyone is experiencing problems with YouTube right now. I was able to use it just fine. Down Right Now lists it as having a probably service disruption based on user reports. If you’re one of the lucky people who are fuming about YouTube being down right now, you’re probably getting this error message:
Aren’t you glad to hear that trained monkeys are working on fixing it? Of course it is a joke, but YouTube engineers might not find it very funny. Some have speculated that YouTube was hacked because of the silly message, but there’s absolutely no evidence for that. Also Google usually is pretty casual and sometimes a little silly in its quest to be “cool.” We have reached out to Google for a comment on today’s outage and will update this post if the company responds.
The map from Down Detector indicates that most of the outages appear to be in Europe, although there are also smaller outages in the U.S., Chili, and scattered in a few other places.
YouTube launches Red
YouTube just launched its new subscription service Red today, which allows U.S. users to watch content without ads by paying a monthly fee. Google is offering a free trial for the service starting today. Many of the video platform’s most popular YouTubers were concerned that they wouldn’t be paid if subscribers watched their watched their videos during the one-month free trial.
YouTube has confirmed to us that creators will not receive revenue when a #YouTubeRed user watches your videos during the free trial.
— Fullscreen Network (@FullscreenNet) October 27, 2015
Currently content creators earn money from the ads that are shown during their videos. Their concerns started after content provider network Fullscreen tweeted that Google said it won’t pay providers during the free trial.
The BBC reported earlier today that Google was expected to confirm that it would pay YouTubers whose videos are viewed without ads as part of the free trial, citing unnamed sources. The British media outlet added that Google is expected to pay YouTubers from the monthly subscription fees it collects based on the number of minutes their videos are watched.
The company has yet to confirm whether YouTubers will actually be paid during the free trial, however.
You may remember that Apple tried to do this with its three-month free trial of its streaming music service, but thanks to pop star Taylor Swift, the company changed its mind and agreed to pay the artists during the free trial.
